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Are you living your best life now?
Not always? This is a podcast for you.
Duke Professor Kate Bowler is an expert in the stories we tell about success and failure, suffering and happiness. She had Stage IV cancer. Then she didn’t. And since then, all she wants to do is talk to funny and wise people about how to live with the knowledge that, well, everything happens.
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Podcasts on Caring at Work
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Stay Curious
With Alan AldaWe don’t usually have repeat guests on this podcast… except we’re making an exception for the wonderful and wise Alan Alda. Alan Alda, of course, is an award-winning actor, writer, director, and podcast host. You probably know and love him as Hawkeye on M*A*S*H or Senator Arnie Vinick on The West Wing. He is endlessly curious on just about every topic—which makes him the perfect person to talk to about empathy, learning across differences (and disagreement), and how we might age into new hobbies and careers.
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The Caring Power of Community
With Angela WilliamsHow do you sustain a life of service…especially when your job costs you something? Angela Williams has dedicated her life to advocating for others. She joined the military. She became a lawyer. She became a minister. Wait, now she runs one of the largest service organizations in the world, United Way, as its CEO? Incredible. But what’s behind all this is a story about service. About what it takes to stay in the long, slow work of community. You will believe when she says that it’s hard…and it’s good. At the same time.
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The Art of Presence
With John SwintonSome people are the LEAN IN sort. They lean into your unsolvable problems, show up on your impossible days, and walk with you all the way to the end. How do we become them? How do we create belonging when the people we love experience such uncertainty? Practical theologian and mental health nurse John Swinton knows a thing or two about this kind of love.
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Don’t Come Out Empty Handed
With Rabbi Steve LederHow should you show up for people in grief? What do you say? What should you do? Why is it that beauty can exist alongside deep suffering? What can be said at funerals when the person who died was complicated? These are just a few of the questions I wanted to ask Steve Leder—a bestselling author and a rabbi who has presided over a thousand funerals with wisdom and kindness.
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Number Our Days
With Tom LongThe Reverend Tom Long wrote the book on funerals. No, really. When grief threatens to swallow us whole, Tom reminds us of our place in a bigger story of hope and faith, of interdependence and the importance of community. He describes the necessity of ritual to pull us into a wider, truer story than the trite version our culture likes to tell.
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Worthy of Boundaries
With Melissa UrbanMelissa Urban’s (CEO of The Whole30) experience of chronic illness forced her to accept her body’s limitations. You are going to love her practical advice for setting healthy boundaries as a way to protect our relationships, manage our limited capacity (especially for those of us navigating chronic pain or illness or caregiving), and remind ourselves of our inherent worth (regardless of how much you can do).
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A Good Funeral
With Thomas LynchThomas Lynch is an essayist, poet, and funeral director in Milford, Michigan, where he has served since 1974 when he took over the trade from his father. Thomas speaks honestly about life and death and mortality from what he’s learned, standing so close to the edge.
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Suspicious of Joy
With Justin WelbyIn this special episode, Kate visited the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, at Lambeth Palace in London.
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Embracing the Complexity of Pain
With Haider WarraichWhen a random weight-lifting accident left cardiologist Dr. Haider Warraich in chronic pain, he went from being a physician to being a patient in one moment. His experience of chronic pain gives him a hardwon insight as he reexamines how we understand and treat pain.
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Being Church on Our Worst Days
With Liz TichenorAuthor and priest Liz Tichenor lost her mom and her baby in the same year. Brand new to leading a church and reeling from the grief, the pain was enough to break her. But it didn’t—because other people carried her through.
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Leaning into Uncertainty
With Adam GrantEverything is in flux. Nothing is the same anymore. How do we live amid all of this uncertainty? Well, psychologist and bestselling author Adam Grant believes we may have to do some re-thinking.
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Beautiful, Terrible, and Everything In-Between
With Mari AndrewHow do we navigate the life in-between? In-between relationships or jobs or friends. In-between independence and dependence. In-between the life we have and the life we’ve always wanted.
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Our Bodies Keep Score
With Bessel van der KolkWhen something truly awful happens, we can’t forget. That memory isn’t just stored in our brains. Our bodies keep the score too. Researcher and psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk has spent his life studying the effects of trauma on adults and children.
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Belonging
With Willie JenningsOur bodies tell a story, and we find ourselves having to live inside it. At home. At work. At church. At school. But what happens when the places we love don’t always love us back?
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Beauty in the Breaking
With Michele HarperEmergency Rooms are the theater of life itself. For ER Dr. Michele Harper, work has become a calling—to bear witness to people’s problems both large and small, to advocate for better care, to catch those who fall through society’s cracks, to stand up against discrimination, to remind patients that the pain they have endured is not fair… it was never supposed to be this way.
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Bless the Nurses
With Christie WatsonAt the core of nursing is the ability to love a stranger, to care indiscriminately. Christie Watson was a nurse in the UK for 20 years before she began teaching nurses. But when COVID-19 hit, she knew she needed to stand with her colleagues. So she put on her scrubs once again. In this moving conversation, Kate and Christie discuss the cost of COVID on healthcare workers, chaplains, and those who can’t be by their loved ones’ side when they need it most. If you are a nurse, know a nurse, or have been cared for by one before, this…
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Medicine with a Soul
With Victoria SweetHow do doctors, nurses, and other caring professionals keep their hearts soft when there are forces that make it hard to stay that way? With her radically compassionate approach to medicine, Dr. Victoria Sweet calls us to slow down in a world that loves quick fixes. In today’s conversation, Kate and Victoria give us more language about what helps us all stay connected to the people we serve.
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Your Work is a Calling
With Will WillimonWhat does it mean to be called to something? What if that job wears you thin? What if you think you’ve aged out of your vocation? In this episode, Kate and the Reverend Dr. Will Willimon talk about what to do when the roles we play cost us more than we’re willing to pay and how aging invites us to take a new look at our purpose. (Also, you’ll hear about the time Kate offered Will a bit of necessary… perspective.)
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The Magic of WE
When a group of young moms died around the same time, clinicians Justin Yopp and Don Rosenstein wanted to refer their widowed spouses to a grief support group… but none existed. So they started their own. Kate, Justin, and Don discuss the loss of imagined futures and the particular needs of young, widowed parents. Together, they uncover the magic of we.
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Joy is the Oxygen
With Gary HaugenCertain people decide to make other people’s pain their own. Gary Haugen, founder and CEO of International Justice Mission, is one of those people. In this episode, Kate and Gary talk about how even in the darkest places, joy and goodness can be found.
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Hope Wears Sneakers
With David FajgenbaumThis is the story of one young doctor’s race against the clock as he searches for a cure for his own rare disease that brought him to the brink of death too many times to count. In this episode, Kate and David Fajgenbaum speak about facing impossible odds and how love can turn hope into action.
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Does My Pain Count?
With Lori GottliebHow do we find joy and connection when tragedy surrounds us? In this episode, Kate speaks with bestselling author and psychotherapist Lori Gottlieb about creating daily rhythms, living in the both/and, and grief in the time of COVID19.
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The Uncertainty Specialist
With Sunita PuriPain is like a geography—one that isn’t foreign to palliative care physician, Dr. Sunita Puri. Kate and Sunita speak about needing new language for walking the borderlands and how we all might learn to live—and die—with a bit more courage.
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More Than Enough
With Ari JohnsonSometimes everything is possible. Sometimes nothing is possible. How do you know the difference? Dr. Ari Johnson works to change the infant and mother mortality rates in Mali. Kate and Ari speak about how when other people are suffering, we must act, even when the problems seem insurmountable. Because your pain is mine too.
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The Loneliness Epidemic
With Vivek MurthyUS Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy embarked on a listening tour to determine what was ailing Americans. The answer surprised him. In this soulful conversation, he speaks with Kate about loneliness as a public health crisis and how the experience of disconnection affects our ability to weather life’s most difficult storms.
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We Belong to Each Other
With Jerome AdamsUS Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams is committed to combatting the rising fatalities from opioids because he knows the struggle too well. His brother is one of the millions of Americans who is ensnared by addiction. Jerome talks to Kate about how a broken heart helped him understand his job as “America’s doctor.”
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The Speed of Love
With John SwintonThe quality of time depends on our abilities and disabilities, possibilities and limitations. In a world of speed and productivity, Kate speaks with disability theologian John Swinton on how slowing down deepens our ability to love.
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Can You Hear Me Now?
With Alan AldaAlan Alda is best known for his prolific acting career. But he has also spent years learning about, and teaching, communication. The Emmy-winning actor and star of television’s M*A*S*H teaches doctors and scientists to communicate more effectively and wrote the recent book, If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face?. He talks with Kate about why human beings are so bad at talking about sickness– and about what helps them improve.
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The Luckiest Unlucky Person
With Tig NotaroHow do you live knowing life can just come undone at a moment’s notice? In the span of a few months, Tig Notaro received three life-threatening illnesses, unexpectedly lost her mom, and went through a breakup. Tig is a brilliant comedian whose real life informs her comedy and has a lot to teach us about living honestly in the face of reality.
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Life Worth Living
With Miroslav VolfWhat makes a good life? How would you answer that question? Not just life in the abstract… but what makes YOUR life good? Professor Miroslav Volf teaches a popular class at Yale University which guides students through these kinds of questions and might help us all think a little more deeply about what our lives are adding up to be.
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To Be Loved Like That
With Kwame AlexanderOur most precious relationships are often our most complicated, aren’t they? Poet and bestselling author Kwame Alexander wrote an honest book of poems and essays that name the difficult and beautiful and heart-wrenching conversations we have (or should be having) with the people we love and with the ones who love us.
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Clear Eyes, Full Hearts
With Minka KellyHow do we stay soft in a world that has taught us to be tough? Actress Minka Kelly is known for her roles as Lyla Garrity on Friday Night Lights or as Samantha in HBO’s Euphoria. Despite her fame on the big screen, one might not realize the chaos that surrounded her childhood. Being raised by a single mom who worked as a stripper and struggled with addiction, Minka had to learn how to take care of herself and the adults around her, and, eventually, to forgive her mom.
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The Art of Presence
With John SwintonSome people are the LEAN IN sort. They lean into your unsolvable problems, show up on your impossible days, and walk with you all the way to the end. How do we become them? How do we create belonging when the people we love experience such uncertainty? Practical theologian and mental health nurse John Swinton knows a thing or two about this kind of love.
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This Place Could be Beautiful, Right?
With Maggie SmithMaggie Smith (poet and author of books like Keep Moving and You Could Make This Place Beautiful) chronicles the aftermath of a painful divorce she didn’t see coming. How do we raise our kids in the wake of such change? And how do we reconcile who we are and who we are becoming?
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No More Do Overs
With Mary Louise KellyWhat happens when the people we built our lives around stop needing us? Or when we have to pick between our meaningful careers or our family? And what do we do with the ambiguous grief that comes with every expected and unexpected change? Today, Kate takes an honest look at juggling the demands on our time and on our heart with NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly.
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Don’t Come Out Empty Handed
With Rabbi Steve LederHow should you show up for people in grief? What do you say? What should you do? Why is it that beauty can exist alongside deep suffering? What can be said at funerals when the person who died was complicated? These are just a few of the questions I wanted to ask Steve Leder—a bestselling author and a rabbi who has presided over a thousand funerals with wisdom and kindness.
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Where We Turn for Meaning
With Michael IgnatieffHistorian and Canadian politician Michael Ignatieff explores the cracks in our seamless worldviews… or at least the worldviews we thought were seamless until we’re faced with tragedies of all kinds. In this wide-ranging exploration, Kate and Michael probe humanity’s enduring attempt to console ourselves and construct meaning from our pain.
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Complicated Grief and Complicated Love
With Paulina PorizkovaSupermodel Paulina Porizkova has been in the public eye all her life. But it has been a rollercoaster of soaring successes and deep heartache. Grief and pain comes to us all, and in those moments, we need our shared humanity (and not our super-anythingness) to build a bridge back to others.
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Number Our Days
With Tom LongThe Reverend Tom Long wrote the book on funerals. No, really. When grief threatens to swallow us whole, Tom reminds us of our place in a bigger story of hope and faith, of interdependence and the importance of community. He describes the necessity of ritual to pull us into a wider, truer story than the trite version our culture likes to tell.
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Love Pulls You Forward
With Elaine PagelsOver thirty years ago, Elaine Pagels’ young son and husband died within the same year. In this tender conversation, Kate and Elaine discuss surviving the aftermath of such devastation, the painful explanations religion often offers, and how we love and keep loving even after so much tragedy.
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Adapting to Loss
With Frank BruniEvery problem New York Times columnist Frank Bruni faced had a simple fix. Doctors offered reasonable solutions for reasonable problems. Preventative care guaranteed future health. That is, until he woke up one morning without vision in his eye. This experience forced him to rethink how much of life is in our control and how to live fully in the face of unfixable problems.
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Back to the Beginning
With Beth MooreBeth Moore has been in the limelight for almost thirty years, but during that time, she revealed very little about her formative family history. Now, this world-famous Bible teacher is ready to tell her story for the first time.
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Blessing our ACTUAL Lives
With Jessica RichieWelcome to SEASON TEN of the Everything Happens Podcast! Kate and Jessica talk about their work on the Everything Happens Project and podcast over the past 10 seasons. They also talk about their new book The Lives We Actually Have, which is a book of blessings. Blessings are more than prayers, they also help give you language to describe where God is in real life situations.
